January 16, 2018

"And so it’s up to us to lead the way in confronting the private, intimate interactions that may be technically consensual but still profoundly sexist. This will only happen if we move beyond being reactively 'sex positive' and recognize that human sexual interactions are not always clear-cut: yes or no, good or bad, empowering or not, either assault and worth worrying about or technically consensual and therefore not at a problem. We can – we must – wade into the messy, complicated nature of sex in a misogynist world. What a shame that opportunity was wholly missed with this breathless celebrity exposé."

I'm surprised to see the belief that feminists haven't yet moved from "being reactively 'sex positive'"! But I think I get it. Is it that young feminists are too tightly bonded to the notion that sex should turn out well whenever they decide to have it? (I mean: as opposed to assessing the situation and predicting the odds of having an unrewarding or actively bad experience.)

117 comments:

And so it’s up to us to lead the way in confronting the private, intimate interactions that may be technically consensual but still profoundly sexist.... We can – we must – wade into the messy, complicated nature of sex in a misogynist world.

The "us" and the "we" is what gets me.

The article is missing the imperative, implicit "you". "Don't do shit you don't want to do."

We are currently in the cultural mode that says one individual's perceived bad experience with one other individual, one time, should be reported in great detail from one anonymous perspective while naming the other party. In a major publication.

This one girl I was with was so annoying! Every time I stuck my fingers down her throat, she would get up and move across the room. Every freakin' time. Plus, she never gave me a straight answer as to where she wanted me to fuck her. What's up with that?!?

"And so it’s up to us to lead the way in confronting the private, intimate interactions that may be technically consensual but still profoundly sexist."

Somebody sounds like they're enlightened AND important!

This will only happen if we move beyond being reactively 'sex positive' and recognize that human sexual interactions are not always clear-cut: recognize that human sexual interactions are not always clear-cut:

Somebody also sounds like they're giving a bossy lecture to 3rd graders.

And so it’s up to us to lead the way in confronting the private, intimate interactions that may be technically consensual but still profoundly sexist.

Make up your mind...does consent matter or not? So I assume "technically consensual" means that yes the woman consented, but we still retain the right to complain/change our minds?

This will only happen if we move beyond being reactively 'sex positive'

Somebody hasn't been paying attention. Academic feminism long ago proclaimed that heterosexual sex is a tool of patriarchal oppression and all penis in vagina sex is rape.

and recognize that human sexual interactions are not always clear-cut: yes or no, good or bad, empowering or not, either assault and worth worrying about or technically consensual and therefore not at a problem.

Feminists have exacerbated the problem through politicization and monetization schemes. Denigrating individual dignity and debasing human life only accelerated the victimization of women, men, and those early in human evolution without a voice to protest or arms to defend their lives. Feminists are the enemy they have been looking for.

"Is it that young feminists are too tightly bonded to the notion that sex should turn out well whenever they decide to have it? "

Maybe. I wonder if some feminists promote the idea that all men are pigs and one should only expect piggish sexual behavior. There seems to be both a political agenda and a lesbian agenda involved.

Most sexually active heterosexuals will freely admit that their early sexual encounters were clumsy and likely unsatisfying to one or more partners. One learns from experience ... hopefully. From my experience, sex is better for me and my partner at 64 than it was at 24.

It is not a crime to be a horny, clumsy, insensitive young man. That is a far cry from Bill Clinton and Harvey Weinstein behavior.

Aziz used his celebrity status to leverage a blowjob. The girl used his celebrity status to get even with him for leveraging his celebrity status. This story doesn't have any useful moral for those men who don't have celebrity status or for those women who don't wish to fuck short, non charismatic sitcom stars. The woman involved should stick to soap opera stars. They're better looking and far more romantic. For those exact same reasons, Aziz should only hit on with men with recurring soap opera roles. Plus, they've also got celebrity status to protect.......,.I generally use my moral grandeur to leverage sex. Works nearly every time. .

Althouse wrote: Is it that young feminists are too tightly bonded to the notion that sex should turn out well whenever they decide to have it?

Of course! What else could one expect of a generation of girls raised from infancy with the expectation of only rewards? There was a time when I believed that those silly participation trophies handed out by youth soccer leagues were a harmless indulgence, that the existential realities of an indifferent Cosmos would be infused into the psyches of those gleefully smug little tykes at some more opportune yet timely moment. However, I learned to my shock that the necessary wisdom continued to be neglected far beyond the age of innocence.

Some years ago I got conned into watching the Women's World Cup championship match. The game itself was about as tolerable as soccer can ever be, which is to say tedious but not dangerously so. But what revolted me was the award ceremony. Gawd, that these alleged grown women weren't insulted by such patronizing dreck was truly dreadful in its import. The childish expectation of getting it all, all the time, because you want it accounts entirely for Trump Derangement Syndrome and this absurd Aziz Anarsi bullshit as well.

"Is it that young feminists are too tightly bonded to the notion that sex should turn out well whenever they decide to have it?" From the feminist axiom that women are special it follows that women have the right to expect sex to turn out well and to bitch about it afterwards regardless.

How are sexual encounters pursued these days among the sophisticated and educated millennials? Do feminist women have "agency," take the initiative and initiate sex, tell the men what to do; or are men still expected to initiate sex and by definition be experts, even though there is no way they know anything about women or their specific partner? From this article and the general conversation I suspect the latter. I recall a French lover who absolutely freaked out and infuriated when I told him what I wanted him to do, but that was in the 70's. His feeling was that his pleasure was all that he needed to be concerned with. Has nothing actually changed in over forty years? I guess not.

As a kid I read a riddle that went, "In both Heaven and Hell, men sit around tables piled high with the most sumptuous of food. Each has a pair of six-foot long chopsticks with which to eat. But in Heaven, all are happy and well-fed, while in Hell everyone starves. What is the reason for the difference?" The answer, of course, is that in Heaven they feed each other, while in Hell they try to feed themselves.

The problem is that sex-positive folks tend to be profoundly self-centered. It's all about their own pleasure, their own consent, their own needs. The other person is almost an afterthought. Thus, if sex isn't some mind-blowing orgasmic joy then they feel cheated. Ironically, I suspect that most of them don't have much good sex as a result. Rather than focus on building a deeper connection with their partner, where each tries to meet the other's needs, they hop from bed to bed, or keep score, or try more and more extreme things (polyamory! S&M! Exhibitionism!) all the while trying desperately to convince the rest of us how wonderful their sex life is.

At least Ansari took the young woman on a date (to a nice restaurant). That's progress!

The problem is that that the young woman had stars in her eyes, and was hoping for a more romantic evening back at his posh apartment, while he was looking for more of a "booty call." There was not a meeting of the minds.

A second problem is that the young woman acquiesced (instead of saying No) to certain sexual acts, then said No to the ultimate act, then felt unsatisfied about the entire affair, then wrote about it on the internet.

Any approach to relationships between men and women - sexual or otherwise - which depends on men properly recognizing and identifying non-verbal clues - no matter how "clear" to the woman - is doomed to failure.

"Maybe. I wonder if some feminists promote the idea that all men are pigs and one should only expect piggish sexual behavior."

That cannot be the answer because that is not "sex positive."

I remember when the "sex positive" feminists came along. They were rejecting the radical critique of sex that was big circa 1990, which was seemed too negative and cynical about the potential for having a good sex life. I have never read anything I thought was well-written that explained "sex positivism." I can understand wanting it, but wishful thinking isn't an intellectual position.

This is about policing and slowly criminalizing the transactional sex that women trade for provisioning and security from beta males when they cannot get an alpha. Since they get pumped and dumped, they are trying to turn their bad casual encounters into negative social and legal consequences for the men they took to bed voluntarily. The solipsism and refusal to take responsibility for their conduct is always at the heart of these pushes.

American women are fine. You just have to approach the relationship with more sophistication than just plotting the quickest vector to her box and constructing every early conversation to manipulate the situation to that outcome. I think Pants said it pretty well.

Young women have been told all their lives that casual sex is not only enjoyable, but empowering. Their actual experience is that it is often tawdry and exploitative. And now their mad, men will be remade to conform to their ideal.

PI is irrational, but with the proper (i.e. irrational) modulus, can be made congruent.

There it is. Real, perceived, and manufactured irrational states, and people, can be made rational through an irrational transformation. It's a perpetual or progressive construct with ever more deplorable outcomes.

Re Filipovic, she did write total garbage. She focuses on "power dynamics" and the imbalance between the sexes without giving any thought or mention to the reason for this imbalance. To wit:

It’s a shame. Not because these stories shouldn’t be told – if anything, we need to talk more about how pervasive power imbalances benefit men and make sex worse for women. But instead of telling this particular story with the care it called for, it was jammed into a pre-existing movement grounded in the language of assault and illegality.

To be sure, pervasive power imbalances do benefit men and make sex worse for women. That's self-evident. And yes, "it's a shame." But we don't "need to talk more" about it or tell more stories "with the care" they "call for." Just identify the cause and the solution becomes obvious.

Feminists, NOT men, brought about this power imbalance. Women voluntarily gave their power away when they bought the feminist lie that there are no differences between the sexes and that they should behave like men (e.g., "free love" and one-night-stands -- "sex positivity," I suppose it's called).

Women created this problem. Women did this to themselves. Yet there is no acknowledgment of this fact in any of the discussions I've seen. What gives?! What am I missing here?

Leigh wrote: "Women created this problem. Women did this to themselves. Yet there is no acknowledgment of this fact in any of the discussions I've seen"

Correct. There is no acknowledgment of the fact because Third Wave feminists will never admit that feminists got something wrong. They'd rather blame "toxic masculinity" and continue on their quest to turn young men into women. Biology? Hormones? Shut up, sexist.

I have said it before, but it seems peculiarly appropriate to this thread. For most of human history, women's sexual choices were controlled - by men, and by other women. Therefore, evolution didn't really *care* what they wanted. They weren't going to get it anyway.

That has changed, at least in the developed world. More and more women are able to act upon their desires and impulses. And you may be sure that evolution is paying close attention.

Why attribute characteristics in behavior to all men or all women, when we are speaking of results of choices in behavior? It's a temptation that should be avoided, because characteristic behavior of those who seek one night stands, and those who don't, greatly differ. There should be different words for those who choose different lifestyles,and I don't think just saying someone is a feminist really carries that meaning. This is difficult since those descriptions have been abandoned because they are deemed hurtful. Maybe new words can be invented, just as we invent new pronouns, to differentiate the chaste from the willingly chased.

"I remember when the "sex positive" feminists came along. They were rejecting the radical critique of sex that was big circa 1990, which was seemed too negative and cynical about the potential for having a good sex life."

I wonder what percentage of political/intellectual feminists were "sex positive." If so, how many were opposite sex positive?

IMHO, there seem to be different agendas in the feminist world. Hence, they are turning off (no pun intended) "common sense" feminists who believe in equal treatment, but don't feel acutely disappointed in the failings of imperfect men.

The "sex positive" message of "grrl power" failed because young women are finding out the hard way what we older women were taught growing up, that casual sex with strangers is not as rewarding an experience for most women as it is for most men.

Fresh from that failure, modern day feminists will now go back to the tried and true leftist playbook: Declare victim status and demand recompense.

I have said it before, but it seems peculiarly appropriate to this thread. For most of human history, women's sexual choices were controlled - by men, and by other women. Therefore, evolution didn't really *care* what they wanted. They weren't going to get it anyway.

That has changed, at least in the developed world. More and more women are able to act upon their desires and impulses. And you may be sure that evolution is paying close attention.

Please show me any evidence that feminism contributes to women having more and healthier children.

"Let me translate this sentence. Meade, my friend, you have work to do! Friendly work, comfortable work, but important work."

Yeah, but I didn't wanna go there. M & A do not enjoy the anonymity which makes it easy for the rest of us to make offhand statements without personal consequences. I choose to regard Althouse' pessimism about women's sexual prospects as - theoretical. It is a convention of polite society that those present during a discussion are excepted from any rash generalizations that might be made.

"Please show me any evidence that feminism contributes to women having more and healthier children."

You misunderstand me rather seriously. I offered no opinion about the likely effect of feminism and "Women's Sexual Liberation" on individual women's reproductive success, but I would be deeply surprised if it turned out to be generally positive.

Feminists are going retro. We women have gone from being victims of the patriarchy where "men only want one thing", to bad-ass sluts driven by "grrl power", back to being victims living in a misogynist world. The message to young women now is "whatever you do sexually, don't forget you're a victim". Is it any surprise that young women, like "Grace", act like one. She's so confused by the mixed messages she gets from our culture that instead of saying no, she victimizes herself with silence.

The left likes to push the idea that you can find empowerment in victimhood. But in reality that's a mixed message that confuses the shit out of the young. Couple that with the feminists not being able to decide whether sex is rape or empowerment -- so they try pushing both ideas to young women!-- and it's no wonder young women are an emotional mess.

Althouse said: Is it that young feminists are too tightly bonded to the notion that sex should turn out well whenever they decide to have it?

I think that's one side of the coin, the other is that the playful interactions and signals that create sexual tension, desire and intimacy are now taboo which leaves an emotional avoid that feels exploitive, especially if the sex is disappointing.

This young woman was so enamoured with the fantasy of a girlfriend experience with a celebrity she admired that she missed his signals that it was a booty call. She also ignored an obvious red flag; Never isolate yourself with a man you don't know. She should set some date boundaries before she finds herself in a really dangerous situation.

I do feel badly for her though, she appears to be a submissive personality type who has been used by Aziz and the fembloggers. Her identity will eventually be revealed, and the women at Babe will have gotten the noterity and clicks they wanted and moved on to a new outrage du jour leaving her to deal with the wreckage alone.

"This young woman was so enamoured with the fantasy of a girlfriend experience with a celebrity she admired that she missed his signals that it was a booty call."

She did not "miss his signals". When he initially "brushed her off", she purposefully sought his attention, and gave him her phone number. She flirted with him by phone, and agreed to a dinner date. After dinner, she apparently agreed to return to his apartment with him. Can anyone suppose that she did not intend at that time to have consensual sex with him? The only interpretation I can put on her account is that the reality of their sexual encounter differed from the fantasy she had constructed, and she changed her mind about the decision she had previously reached to have sex with him. Why she did not simply leave at that point is a complete mystery, as is the question of what exactly she thinks he should have done differently, other than keeping a bottle or two of red wine around.

Aziz isn't the romantic type and knows nothing about actual seduction or how to treat a woman, he's a douche bag of the highest degree. Who feeds a gal her vagina secretions on the the first date. "Hey suck my fingers". If this gal had any moxy, she would have blown him while massaging his prostate, "Hey suck my fingers".

"Women created this problem. Women did this to themselves. Yet there is no acknowledgment of this fact in any of the discussions I've seen. What gives?! What am I missing here?"

That it is far easier to blame men and "society" for problems you've created yourself. That's what you are missing here. If they acknowledged that they have created their own problems, they'd have to actually solve it themselves and not get to tell men they don't know and have no intention of sleeping with what to do.

Playing the victim is what these women do to wield power. It's biological.

Feminists have been on the forefront of tackling these knottier issues of sex, consent, pleasure and power. And so it’s up to us to lead the way in confronting the private, intimate interactions that may be technically consensual but still profoundly sexist.

And feminists have been sending mixed messages about sex for decades-- is it rape? is it empowerment? is it rapey empowerment? And from those mixed messages, today's young women have reached this conclusion: Sex is empowering if I enjoy it completely, but it's tantamount to rape if I don't.

I agree with what others have said, maybe it's time feminists step back and STFU for a while. (I know it's not going to happen, but one can hope.)

We can – we must – wade into the messy, complicated nature of sex in a misogynist world.

It's the differences between men and woman that make sex messy and complicated. Feminists have redefined misogyny/sexism to include "being aware that there are differences between men and women." That's the biggest problem I have with feminism is that it's generated a myth that men and women are equal, and you're a sexist if you don't agree. But we're not equal in every way.

I'm all for equal protection and equal treatment under the law and in the workplace. I'm also for sexual harassment laws in the workplace to protect anyone from being forced into prostitution. And I'm genuinely grateful to the early feminists and suffragettes who fought for these things. But that doesn't mean I'll blind myself to the ways in which men and women differ. Those of us who can understand the differences between the motivations and needs of women vs men have a much clearer understanding of why sex is so messy and complicated, than those who can't.

I guarantee: if you take 2 random people who are not in love and are strangers and they have sex, the odds are great that the sex will not be good. Incompatibility, different sexual styles, lack of understanding of what the other person wants all equal bad sex.

SGT Ted said...'When he initially "brushed her off", she purposefully sought his attention, and gave him her phone number.'

She should stop being a sexual predator and should have respected his brush off.

That's a good one--I should have thought of that!

Maybe its the the economist in me but I can't help but feel sad that everyone ignores the forgotten man: this girl's date to the after-Emmy party. He took her, a civilian, to a fancy celebrity party. It was probably the best event he could ever make it into--a really big deal for him. He picks her as his date--guaranteed to impress her pants off, right? And she repays that by flirting with, and landing/giving her number to, an actual celebrity. A celebrity she then blows, etc, after a quick date and some wine. And, huge insult to injury, she PUBLISHES her account of her shitty treatment of him!No good deed, indeed. Poor guy.

I have never read anything I thought was well-written that explained "sex positivism." I can understand wanting it, but wishful thinking isn't an intellectual position.

Neither have I. It always comes across like an overly enthusiastic camp counselor: "Ok, gang! I'm going to tweet my whistle, and then we're all going to have consensual, mutually satisfactory, and above all enthusiastic sex."

Is it even possible to say that people might have ambiguous and contradictory feelings about sex in a sex positive way? Or does the theory not have a category for that? Lots of people have conflicting ideas about sex even while they're having it!

Hmm, if they're raised on participation trophies, perhaps giving them one when the sex is over, they might feel better about awkward, unsatisfying encounters?

Really, though, I'm more of the opinion that they got out of the encounter exactly what they put into it, with the same lack of reciprocity that they put into everything else, from education to work to marriage. Their expectation has been trained to do little more than show up and demand to be treated like royalty, or even Chelsea Clinton, the epitomy of young entitlement minded feminism.

If their own contribution was lukewarm at best, only a feminist would expect fireworks and an offer for a guest role on "Sex in the City".

Are women more or less likely than men to accept responsibility for their own failures?

A psychiatrist once told me that women have an F word they never say, failure, at least in regard to themselves.

Of course, if you don't accept responsibility for your own failure you can't improve.

Women will say "He was a creep," not "I chose a creep," and then hook up with another creep. Men who are taught "don't stick your dick in crazy" understand that the responsibility for avoiding bad sex, or bad consequences from good sex (see: crazy hot matrix), lies with themselves.

...confronting the private, intimate interactions that may be technically consensual but still profoundly sexist.--Jill the Filip.

Females are so going to not like having that standard applied to them. I'll start with not putting the toilet seat down, not taking out the trash in the rain, and not going downstairs after lights out to investigate after she says she's frightened because she thinks she heard a noise.

Used to be that when I saw a female with her car pulled over to the side of the road I'd hope that her cell phone worked and her auto club membership was paid up then drive on by. Now I just drive on by. She can call 1-800-FEMINIST. She can use the same number when there's something dangerous, risky, or icky to do instead of expecting a man to rescue her from that task. Gonna be unpleasant when females can't rely on all those socially expected duties imposed on men "that may be technically consensual but still profoundly sexist."